About

RickB- Human, Artist, Fool.

Ynys Mon, UK.

The blog is called ten percent because of what Kurt Vonnegut wrote when remembering Susan Sontag - She was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.-

And I'm writing it because I need the therapy and I lust for world domination.

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Al-Libi was rendered through Diego Garcia (stolen by the UK from its inhabitants a crime yet to be accounted for, every time we let them slide, they will do something worse next time), the UK helped it, denied it and has now admitted it. Al-Libi was the prisoner whose torture provided the false connections of Saddam to Al Qaeda.

Two terror suspects who were flown by the CIA to the British territory of Diego Garcia and later allegedly tortured have been named and evidence about their treatment has been revealed for the first time. Mohammed Madni and Shaykh al-Libi are identified in evidence prepared for the Commons foreign affairs committee by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human rights group Reprieve.

They are the two men, said Stafford Smith, referred to, but not identified, by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, when last year, after repeated denials by ministers, he admitted that two people had been rendered through the island in the Indian Ocean in 2002. Miliband said he did not know who the men were.

Madni was later freed and returned to Pakistan where Reprieve’s lawyers met him. “He has been effectively crippled by his torture,” said Stafford Smith.

Al-Libi died in a Libyan jail just as Reprieve lawyers were hoping to gain access to him

Clive Stafford Smith- “Reprieve has been exploring tentative contacts with al Libi, and his death may have been a result of the pressure to allow him to speak openly about his torture.”

In case anyone has forgotten, when Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the head of the Khaldan military training camp in Afghanistan, was captured at the end of 2001 and sent to Egypt to be tortured, he made a false confession that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi later recanted his confession, but not until Secretary of State Colin Powell — to his eternal shame — had used the story in February 2003 in an attempt to persuade the UN to support the invasion of Iraq.

So there’s New Labour helping run the rendition network for a prisoner that was key in creating the lies to facilitate the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent deaths of over 1 million people and creating 5 million refugees. And, they ain’t coming clean anytime soon-

Mike Gapes, the committee’s Labour chairman, said he had received advice that the cases due to be raised fell “wholly within the house sub judice resolution”. The resolution states that “cases in which proceedings are active in UK courts shall not be referred to in any motion, debate or question”.

Mohammed’s treatment before he was flown to Guantánamo is the subject of a police investigation into “possible criminal wrongdoing” by the CIA and an MI5 officer.Stafford Smith said the advice was wrong and that the Mohammed case had been frequently raised in the Commons and the Lords. “It is time for the UK government to come clean about its role in Madni’s detention and to reveal who else has been held on and rendered through Diego Garcia, what happened to them there, and where they are now,” he said.

Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said last night: “These astonishing allegations fly in the face of the assurances given by the foreign secretary to parliament. The use of British territory for illegal state abduction and detention is unacceptable”. Research by his party found that the government had systematically destroyed flight logs for the Diego Garcia US airbase, Davey added.

And of course dead men tell no tales, while it is possible al-Libi died without ‘help’, I think the probabilities point to a hit to protect the guilty in the US & UK governments. Expenses are the least of these scumbag’s crimes. Those who think Blair truly in good faith believed he was doing the right thing have only two options- he is therefore insane or he is lying. So stop perpetuating his bullshit mythical version. This was planned, carefully engineered with malice aforethought. Grubby little lies no different to those told by Nazis hung at Nuremberg. They drafted their falsehoods in the screams of their disappeared victims.

In March, a different reader asked BBC reporter Reeta Chakrabarti why she had claimed that Blair had “passionately believed” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After all, an alternative thesis – based on a ton of compelling evidence – is that Blair was lying. Chakrabarti responded:

“I said Mr Blair passionately believed Iraq had wmd because he has consistently said so.” (Forwarded to Media Lens, March 2, 2009)

Hard to believe, but senior BBC journalists and editors consistently present this argument: leading politicians must be sincere because, well, they say so! What possible reasons could they have for saying one thing and believing another?

Chris Ames, Index on Censorship:- The Home Office and Kent Police have buried a report on the policing of last summer’s climate camp at Kingsnorth power station, provoking suspicions that it was critical of the controversial police tactics at the protest.

During the protest last August, activists complained of aggressive policing, including violence against peaceful protestors, excessive use of stop and search powers, arbitrary arrests and mass confiscation of personal property. A number of MPs called for an inquiry.

Last December, policing minister Vernon Coaker told MPs that the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) was “considering the lessons to be learned” from Kingsnorth. He said he would discuss its report with the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and would then “be happy to share those conclusions” with Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice Secretary David Howarth.

But the report has been shelved, apparently because Kent Police did not like its findings, despite sending it back to be revised. Soon after receiving a “final” version, Chief Constable Michael Fuller commissioned a second review, on the grounds that the NPIA report “was not an evaluation of the operation overall or whether or not strategic and tactical objectives were achieved”.

The force also refused to hand the report to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). Kent Police have declined to say what the report’s findings were, in spite of a claim that its policy “has always been to be open and transparent in everything we do”.

The Home Office is now presenting the second review, which is being carried out by an assistant chief constable of South Yorkshire Police, as a “report by the NPIA”, even though both the NPIA and South Yorkshire Police have stated that the NPIA are not involved.

The White House has asked Congress for — and seems likely to receive — $736 million to build a new U.S. embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital. The scale of the projects rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.

The U.S. government also plans to revamp its consular buildings in the eastern city of Lahore and in Peshawar, the regional capital of the militancy plagued North West Frontier Province. The consulate in the southern megacity of Karachi has just been relocated into a new purpose-built accommodation. A senior State Department official confirmed that the U.S. plan for the consulate in Peshawar involves the purchase of the luxury Pearl Continental hotel. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

The Pearl Contintental is the city’s only five-star hotel, set in its own expansive grounds, with a swimming pool. It’s owned by Pakistani tycoon Sadruddin Hashwani.

Also see Pulse on the amazing civic efforts to look after refugees that are being overwhelmed by the sheer scale -2.4 million refugees- and also the perception this is a war against Pukhtuns.

The BNP are racists & fascists, who revel in violence and eugenics. If you vote for them, so are you. Don’t kid yourself, this isn’t politics, you’re a piece of shit. Clear?

The Guardian… the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has spent months infiltrating the far right’s network of websites and chatrooms and found that many BNP activists share O’Sullivan’s views.

They include:

• Jeffrey Marshall, senior organiser for the BNP’s London European election campaign. Following the death of David Cameron’s disabled son Ivan, Marshall claimed in an internet forum discussion: “We live in a country today which is unhealthily dominated by an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive. No good will come of it.”

Later, in response to comments made by others on the site, Marshall is alleged to have written: “There is not a great deal of point in keeping these people alive after all.” He said the comments were private and some had been paraphrased and taken out of context. He admitted making the former comment, but said he could not recall making the latter one in an email to the forum, a copy of which is in the Observer’s possession.

• Garry Aronsson, Griffin’s running mate for the European parliament in the North West, posts an avatar on his personal web page featuring a Nazi SS death’s head alongside the statement, “Speak English Or Die!” Aronsson proclaims on the site: “Every time you change your way of life to make immigrants more comfortable you betray OUR future!” He lists his hobbies as “devising slow and terrible ways of paying back the Guardian-reading cunts who have betrayed the British people into poverty and slavery. I AM NOT JOKING.”

• Barry Bennett, MEP candidate for the South West, posted several years ago under a pseudonym in a white supremacist forum the bizarre statement that “David Beckham is not white, he’s a black man.” Bennett, who is half-Jewish according to the BNP’s deputy leader, Simon Darby, continued: “Beckham is an insult to Britishness, and I’m glad he’s not here.” He added: “I know perfectly respectable half-Jews in the BNP… even Hitler had honorary Aryans who were of Jewish descent… so whatever’s good enough for Hitler’s good enough for me. God rest his soul.”

• Russ Green, MEP candidate for the West Midlands, posted recently on Darby’s web page: “If we allowed Indians, Africans, etc to join [the BNP], we would become the ‘British multi-National party’ … and I really do hope that never happens!” Darby said he echoed Green’s sentiments.

• Dave Strickson, a BNP organiser who helps run its eastern region European election campaign, carried on his personal “Thurrock Patriots” blog a recent report of the fatal stabbing of a teenager in east London beneath the words “Another teen stabbed in Coon Town”. The site also carried a mock-up racist version of the US dollar entitled “Obama Wog Dollar”. Darby said the BNP did not endorse these comments and described them as “beyond the pale”.

When confronted in the past about the extreme views of some of its members, the BNP senior hierarchy has often tried to dismiss them as unrepresentative of the party’s core membership. But it appears that they run right to the top of the party.

Lee Barnes, the BNP’s senior legal officer and one of Griffin’s closest allies, has posted a video on his personal blog of a black suspect being beaten by police officers in the US and describes it as “brilliant”. Barnes adds: “The beating of Rodney King still makes me laugh.”

Barnes told the Observer his comments were “nothing to do with colour” but were merely a reflection of his belief that the police should have more powers to punish perpetrators of crime by “giving them a good thrashing”.

This gets nastier, the LTTE leadership were surrendering when they were shot down, journalist Marie Colvin was involved in the negotiations along with a Tamil MP who has fled Sri Lanka in fear for his life-

A Tamil who was in a group that escaped the killing zone later told an aid worker that Nadesan and Puleedevan walked towards Sri Lankan army lines with a white flag in a group of about a dozen men and women. He said the army fired machineguns at them.

Nadesan’s wife, a Sinhalese, yelled in Sinhala: “He is trying to surrender and you are shooting him.” She was also shot down.

The source said all in the group were killed. He is now in hiding. Chandra Nehru has fled the country after being threatened, the MP says, by the President and his brother.

The role the UN is playing looks to be very questionable, firstly-

Over the past few days, [Vijay] Nambiar’s role as UN envoy has come into question. His brother, Satish, has been a paid consultant to the Sri Lankan army since 2002. Satish once wrote that General Sarath Fonseka, commander of the Sri Lankan armed forces, “displayed the qualities of a great military leader”.

Then this-

French newspaper Le Monde published on Friday an article accusing the United Nations (UN) of deliberately hiding facts about civilian killings during the last months of the civil war in Sri Lanka in order to protect their own activities in the country.

According to investigative journalism by Le Monde, The UN did not publish the number of civilians killed until it was finally leaked. According to a UN confidential report, 7,720 people were killed (among them 678 children) and 18,465 were injured (among them 2,384 children) between January 20 and May 13. A UN official declared to Le Monde that his hierarchy tried to suppress these figures to remain in good terms with the government. When these numbers were leaked, Neil Buhne, the UN official coordinator in Sri Lanka, asked to be the only recipient of the figures in the future. Even the secretary general Ban Ki-moon tried to hide the numbers, according to Le Monde.

…

Le Monde also wrote that the United Nations did not help its people on the ground. Text messages sent by local employees in the war zones asked to “stop the war” and “what is the international community doing”. “Hundreds of people trying to flew where caught by local dictators and beaten, without distinction of age and sex. I hear them crying.” said another one. In April, Vijay Nambiar asked the locals to keep a “low profile” and play an active role in supporting the government.

As Stephen Fry in an early routine said, I stooped to pick a Buttercup (although why buttock’s had been left lying around I don’t know…) and lo! This strange, wind activated, alien flower announced summer. And dig what Evo Morales wrote to the 4th Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples of the Abya Yala (thanks to translation by Otto @ Inca Kola News)-

“For thousands of years we lived with nature, in constant balance with her and inside her. Today we feel the devastating effects of the neoliberal, transnational capitalist system that is quickly detroying our planet.

“From outside and above, they still try to impose upon us economic policies that attack our rights as people, the rights of other living creatures and the rights of planet earth. They still try to sell us trinkets for gold. They told us there was a discovery when there was in fact an invasion. They told us there was a conquest when there was a genocide. And now they say that they want integration and to include us in the world economy when all they really want is to steal our riches, keep the profits and ignore solidarity.”

I like that “For thousands of years we lived with nature, in constant balance with her and inside her.” and today the weather makes clear we are but one small part of this living entity and we should pause and reflect on how we continue to live here without wrecking it. Can we reorder the seasons, or stop the sun beating down on us? We (men!) are not masters of nature, we are part of it. Indeed we should listen to the feminine, that nature gives life, that women give life, that there are cycles better understood by women than men. That if we are to survive we need to stop trying to dominate, we need to share, use our intelligence not our greed, realise that competition has a place but co-operation and nurturing is how life is made good and most importantly, the future has to be equality for all of us. At the moment the system the rich and powerful are inflicting will not lead to that, it has been around for long enough to amply demonstrate it leads to a small rich ruling class and varying degrees of terror for the rest of us. And because of how the odds have been rigged by the house, voting is the least way of making change (for now), that also needs to be changed. As if I need to tell anyone in Britain our elected representatives have fallen far short of even a basic moral standard, pity the outrage is over money though, not the murder of Iraqis and Afghans, not the torture, not the imprisonment of migrants. Anyways, change, what did that remind me of-

‘On [the robot’s] world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.’

‘Odd,’ said Arthur, ‘I thought you said it was a democracy?’

‘I did,’ said Ford, ‘It is.’

‘So,’ said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, ‘why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?’

‘It honestly doesn’t occur to them,’ said Ford. ‘They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.’

‘You mean they actually vote for the lizards?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Ford with a shrug, ‘of course.’

‘But,’ said Arthur, going for the big one again, ‘why?’

‘Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,’ said Ford, ‘the wrong lizard might get in.’